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Brain Death

Alfie Evans has a brain disorder. He has been at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool since December 2016. Doctors have not been able to diagnose him and therefore have not treated him, except for providing ventilator support. Alfie has been on and off of the ventilator since being admitted to Alder Hey.

Last December, the hospital sued Alfie’s parents to have Alfie’s ventilator removed, saying it was in the toddler’s “best interest” to die. The judge agreed.

Alfie’s father appealed to the Vatican for help. Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome agreed to take Alfie as a transfer patient.

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Taquisha McKitty

Taquisha McKitty was admitted into the Brampton Civic Hospital, Ontario, Canada on September 14, 2017 having suffered a drug overdose. While although Taquisha was breathing on her own and moving in response to her family, Taquisha was recognized as a registered organ donor and medical treatment to protect and preserve her life were circumvented.

Two apnea tests were performed, she was declared “brain dead” by two physicians in accordance to Ontario law and to this effect, a death certificate was issued September 20, 2017. Her family hopes to have Taquisha’s death certificate canceled in pursuit of medical therapy her wellbeing, to protect and preserve her life, not that of another(s) as an organ donor.

A Brampton judge issued a two-week injunction to keep a woman declared brain dead on September 20 on life support.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Lucille Shaw ruled that Dr. Andrew Baker, chief of critical care at St. Michael’s Hospital would run further tests.

“If you are there with her and you touch her and you grab her feet, she will pull her feet from you. If you tickle her she will move her feet. In one instance one of her cousins was squeezing her hand and asked her to show her thumb and she moved her thumb,” McKitty’s father Stanley Stewart told CP24 on Thursday night. “We know for a fact that she is alive because if she was dead and her brain was dead there is no way that a week-and-a-half later she would still be moving. If you are brain dead then no parts should be moving.”

Dr. Paul Byrne

“What’s going on here is the young lady is living,” Dr. Paul A. Byrne, a retired neonatologist, past president of the Catholic Medical Association is retained by the family to speak on their behalf, told CP24 on Thursday.

“A declaration by a doctor does not make someone dead. There is clearly a difference between being alive and being dead and she is alive. Her heart beats, she has circulation, she moves her legs and she responds to the family.”

Byrne told CP24 that he believes doctors are rushing to declare Taquisha McKitty brain dead so that her organs can be donated. If he is granted expert status, he will be able to advise a physician licensed in Ontario to provide McKitty with treatment.

Dr. Byrne said that all the family wants is for their loved one to be given “proper treatment.” he said it is his belief that Taquisha McKitty could still recover.

“Patients like this, if they treat them with thyroid hormones and other things, they have a chance to continue to live,” he said.

*** Please if you’re ever in this situation don’t do the Apnea test, I have written on it so much and it only makes things worse, even in the doctors call it the “gold standard.”

Brain death is NOT true death. It is a legal term created by doctors to get your organs. When organs are removed from a “brain dead” donor, all the vital signs of the “donors” are still present prior to the harvesting of organs, such as normal body temperature and blood pressure; the heart is beating; vital organs, like the liver and kidneys, are functioning; and the donor is breathing with the help of a ventilator.

In medicine, we protect, preserve, and prolong life and postpone death. Our goal is to keep body and soul united. When a vital organ ceases to function, death can result. On the other hand, medical intervention can sometimes restore the function of the damaged organ, or medical devices (such as pacemakers and heart-lung machines) can preserve life. The observation of a cessation of functioning of the brain or some other organ of the body does not in itself indicate destruction of even that organ, much less death of the person. Dr. Paul Byrne

All of us who know the truth of the fallacy of brain death must pray and be there to help her. Watch the short video with Dr. Byrne and her dad and pastor.

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Israel Stinson was abruptly taken off life support to the devastation of his parents, Fronseca and Nathaniel Stinson.

Perhaps you haven’t followed this story but I have and I am just as horrified as his family is.

You see the long and short of it is the hospital declared Israel “brain dead.” After many court battles Israel’s family moved him to a hospital in Guatemala, where they began to feed Israel and give the family hope.

According to Alexandra Snyder, the families attorney, three Guatemalan doctors, including a neurologist, declared that the boy was NOT brain dead after all.

That diagnosis was based in part on EEG, (electroencephalogram), or other tests used to measure electrical activity in the brain, she said.

Snyder, the families attorney declined to name the Guatemalan doctors or their hospital but dismissed the idea that their opinion weighed less than that of American doctors.

“We’re not talking voodoo here,” she told The Post. “They have access to the same equipment as American doctors. Many of them probably have degrees from American medical schools.”

From Guatemala, the family posted more videos in which they said Israel was improving. After 3 months in Guatemala, Israel was accepted as a patient in Children’s Hospital in LA. HOWEVER, within days the hospital once again went to court to remove the ventilator from Israel.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge removed the restraining order, saying the case had already been decided at state and federal level before the family traveled to Guatemala.

And with that, doctors turned off Israel’s ventilator.

Can you imagine?

Your child pronounced brain dead.

Leave county and improves.

EEG’s and several doctors say your child is NOT brain dead.

LA Children’s Hospital accepts you child back.

You come back ONLY to have the doctor’s go to court and take your child off the ventilator?

Please read more details here and here but most of all pray for this grieving family.

“What I really don’t understand is why this hospital agreed to take this little boy in the first place,” she told The Post, saying the boy’s parents never would have brought Israel back to the United States if they had known the hospital was going to pull the plug. “They knew exactly what his condition was, what his treatment was, and they agreed to take him. But it appears they only accepted him as a patient to put him to death. …

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Mirranda Grace Lawson

I spoke to the parents, (Patrick and Allison Lawson) of Mirranda Grace by phone several weeks ago, right after Mirranda had been on life support due to choking on a piece of popcorn. A friend of mine from W. Virginia contacted me.

I was able to connect them to Dr. Paul Byne to help them in their fight to save Mirranda.

Dr. Paul A. Byrne is a Board Certified Neonatologist and Pediatrician. He is the Founder of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, MO. He is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at University of Toledo, College of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

Dr. Byrne is past-President of the Catholic Medical Association (USA), formerly Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at St. Louis University in St. Louis, MO and Creighton University in Omaha, NE. He was Professor of Pediatrics and Chairman of the Pediatric Department at Oral Roberts University School of Medicine and Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Tulsa, OK.

Mirranda choked on popcorn on May 11th. Miranda had a lack of oxygen resulting in her being in an unconscious comatose state but still alive. When a person, especially a young person, is unconscious and on a ventilator, the desire is to get their vital organs for transplantation into others who have a greater lobby.

Within a few days the doctors and hospital were presenting to the parents that Mirranda was “brain dead.” However, they could not confirm “brain death” without doing the crucial and lethal apnea test.

On Thursday, June 9. After the judge heard the testimonies, the judge said he would rule on Friday, June 10. His ruling was that the doctors and the hospital could carry out the testing and evaluation at their discretion.

The judge heard testimony that the removal of the ventilator from Miranda could only harm her and possibly kill her. Yet he ruled that the doctors and the hospital could remove Miranda’s life support.

Parents you must be fully informed and armed with the truth before such a decision is forced upon you at the time of greatest distress.

Part of every declaration “brain death” is the apnea test which is not for the benefit of the patient. It is the last so-called “clinical” test to achieve the declaration of “brain death.”

I know you have heard me loud and clear many times on this blog, and it is the first thing I tell people when they call, DO NOT DO THE APNEA TEST.

The need for a ventilator doesn’t mean the brain is permanently incapacitated or ones’ health cannot be restored! This “life support” device is a supplement to the patient’s compromised, weakened physical condition and is necessary for providing the patient with oxygen while removing carbon dioxide during the most crucial period. Time and continued medical care are necessary for the ongoing treatment to protect and preserve the patient’s life. The ventilator provides the patient and physician this valuable time as it eases the patient’s distressed respiratory system allowing time for therapy and healing.

Knowing full well how critical the ventilator is, to withdraw it when it is needed most is absurd! Yet, it is planned for the patient to be taken off for up to 10 minutes – the patient can only get worse! This test is sometimes lethal. Make sure to instruct all medical staff:“DO NOT DO AN APNEA TEST!”

Associate Professor Cicero Galli Coimbra, Head of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Department at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil has completed the study, “Implications of ischemic penumbra for the diagnosis of brain death. Apnoea testing may induce rather than diagnose brain death”.[20]

The study discovers that where there is brain damage there may be an area of the brain that is destroyed plus an uninjured section (even if there is no apparent function) and between the two a penumbra where brain cells are not functioning but recoverable. In severe cases a person may be wrongly declared “brain stem dead” or “brain dead”.

Coimbra’s research shows that the testing for “brain death” both delays treatment for the patient and that the actual apnoea test may bring on that state.

“… a review of the literature shows that some of even the most severely head-injured patients (GCS of 3 or 4, with pupils fixed to light) who are not subjected to apnoea may recover to normal life. Early labelling of these patients as dead (for transplant purposes) during the past 3 decades has diverted medical researchers away from developing novel therapeutic resources that could already have saved many thousands of human lives throughout the world.”[30]

The family has set up a GoFundMe page for Mirranda. If you can’t donate please pray for the Lawson family and Mirranda Grace.

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Scientific Study to Overturn Brain Dead?

This has been all over the news for the last month, so I won’t say too much more. Just bring it to your attention if you missed it. Ira Pastor is the CEO of the Bioquark a biotech firm located in Philadelphia. He will be spearheading the study approved by the IRB. (Institutional Review Board) All studies using human subjects must have this approval.

I am actually looking forward to the results of this study. There have been any studies on those pronounced “brain dead” in many years. I think the last was the Minnesota Criteria where they stopped using EEG’s to see the brain activity as it would alarm parents.

Pastor believes that brain-dead individuals, considered legally dead in America, are only mostly dead. Brain death, he says, is a curable illness.

At the point of death, everything BELOW the brain stem, which is technically unsupported, is still alive and quite functional and capable of doing stuff if properly supported.

Photo Credit Shutterstock Underwater.

A trial to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of patients who have been declared clinically dead has been approved. Reanima Advanced Biosciences aims to use stem cells, injections of peptides, and nerve stimulation to reverse “brain death.

The study aims to use stem cells, injections of peptides, and nerve stimulation to reverse “brain death as noted in the current clinical examination.

Based on the premise that many amphibians, fish, and even some mammals can regenerate large portions of their brains after severe trauma. They don’t need cutting-edge therapies or laboratory conditions to recover from brain death; they just sleep for a while and wake up with fresh brains.

Why don’t humans and other primates have this regenerative ability?

That’s one of the main questions the ReAnima teams are looking to answer right now.

“There is no ‘magic bullet’ for reversing brain death,” says Ira Pastor. “In this project, we’re employing a combination of biological regenerative tools, along with an array of medical devices used for stimulation of patients with other severe disorders of consciousness, such as comas and vegetative states.”

Regenerating a brain-dead patient’s nervous system will not be a simple task. “Nature thrives on complexity,” says Pastor; and the ReAnima project’s goal is to “train” severely damaged brains to rebuild themselves around whatever neural structure remains intact, using a combination of the latest therapeutic techniques.

If individuality boils down to nothing more than connections between neurons, but “based on several factors, we are placing our bets that the human mind is much more than that,” he says, “and on the idea that memory will be a recoverable commodity over time.”

Many of our bodies’ cells die and are renewed thousands of times over our lives, yet we manage to hold onto our personalities – even those of us who suffer from Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Is brain death any different?

The Study

Patients will receive daily peptide injections directly into their spinal cords to go with biweekly stem cell treatments, according to the New York Daily News. They’ll also receive stem cell injections in the brain along with laser and nerve stimulation techniques used to awaken comatose patients. For a six-month period, the patients will be observed for signs of regeneration in the upper spinal cord, which regulates respiration and heartbeat.

“If someone wants to criticize us for helping the family whose 3-year-old accidentally drowned in the pool, or whose 16-year-old flew off a motorcycle with no helmet on, who do not accept the statement, ‘Sorry, there is nothing else we can do for them,’ from a global modern medical establishment that generates $7 trillion annually, then so be it,”

Dr. Pastor believes that there is still much to learn about the depths of human life, and this project will serve as a stepping stone in unveiling the deepest mysteries of the human mind.